Literary Fiction Western

Gifted pastry chef Spike Ridley knows most everything about cooking, but the recipe for home has eluded her. Have mixer will travel has been her motto, and now she has lost the one person who’d loved her from childhood. When she crashes into famed quarterback Tate Ransom, life takes an abrupt turn. Tate has suffered a deep personal loss of his own, and coupled with a career-threatening injury, the ground beneath him is shifting. Forced into a road trip toward uncertain futures, the snarky sprite and celebrity jock get glimpses beneath the other’s veneer, and what they find surprises them.

Texas rancher Case Marshall is driving a truck instead of his hell-raiser Harley after a crooked partner nearly bankrupts his Flying M Ranch. New Orleans socialite Samantha St. Claire never dreamed she'd be on the run from the mob--or that she'd find her white knight at a truck stop. Their worlds couldn't be less compatible or their attraction more high-octane…but there are dangers and shocking secrets to battle before they can dream of a future together.

Franny Morgan is a small-town café owner with an insatiable need to rescue lost souls the way she couldn't hang onto her two sisters after their parents died. Now she's involved in a letter-writing campaign to save the small dusty town where she winds up. Nathan Russell is a down-on-his-luck carpenter who shows up on her doorstep, willing to trade work on her rundown building for food and a roof—not because the wealthy investor needs either but because he's determined to fulfill the obligations his brother abandoned.

Hollywood’s hottest heartthrob Liam Sullivan has escaped the paparazzi and celebrity gossips after a sensational tragedy, reexamining his high-flying lifestyle and his priorities. In disguise, traveling through the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, he encounters a rail-thin, starving woman who has lost everything but the dilapidated cabin where she once lived with her grandmother in happier days. Raina Donovan is determined to make her stand there, but winter is coming, and Liam cannot desert her until he can make her safe, however much she tries to make him leave.

FBI agent Alex Sandoval has never forgiven himself for not protecting a young girl from seeing her mother murdered during his first hostage negotiation twelve years ago. Now Jade Butler is a cop herself, assigned to a prestigious multi-agency task force hunting for the killer of several young girls in Austin, Texas—and Alex is the agent in charge of the case. They never met all those years ago, but Jade recognizes his voice as the one she still hears in her dreams, the voice that has comforted her through many a terrifying flashback.

Vanessa Porter's brilliant career as a hotelier goes up in flames after a scandal, and she pours herself into rehabbing an old mansion to become a boutique hotel, doing much of the work herself because her funds are running out. Hotshot adventure photographer Dane Sullivan's career is grounded after a near-death fall, and he's no longer sure he wants the life of death-defying risk that energized him for so long. While he's recovering and assessing his options, his kid sister Jilly volunteers him to help her friend Vanessa with handyman skills he and his brothers learned from their dad.

Detective Sean Fitzgerald is hot on the trail of a man who is key to breaking a human trafficking ring, but he needs a way to get close without arousing suspicion. His opportunity comes in the form of film star Annabelle Quinn, who's in town and in need of a bodyguard. Her best friend is his top suspect, and he can use the connection to break his case. But when Annabelle comes mean so much more than a means to an end for Sean, his objectivity is in danger, and he's painfully aware that the lies between them could doom any hope for a future for them.

Neal Clark ramrod of the Circle C Ranch was in Cascade City to see the gunsmith when the Shelly gang attempted to hold up the bank. Neal rushed out of the shop and fired killing Buck Shelly and his son Luke. Buck's teenage son Ed was holding the horses. He escaped but was believed to be mortally wounded. At least that's what Neal thought - until he received a letter from Ed declaring that he’d be back to settle the score.

He was still a young man, but he'd used that handful of years effectively, building a bad reputation that spanned the West, his villainy taking different forms everywhere it took roost. Denver knew him as the Doctor; Texans called him Montana; and folks in Idaho called him Texas. On account of his youth, most everywhere else called him the Lonesome Kid.

It’s early summer in Jackson, Wyoming. Former East Coast prosecutor Jake Trent, now a local fishing guide, is wading through a swift current of local politics, introspection, and tragedy. Three seemingly unrelated deaths have occurred in one day - unheard of in the scenic valley. A skier perishes in a freak late-season avalanche. A French couple is discovered mutilated on a remote trail in Grand Teton National Park - presumably by a bear.On the Snake River, Jake himself finds the body of an expensively attired tourist fisherman.

High school math teacher Chelsea Gardner has the perfect plan. She's tired of dating all the wrong men, and after years of frustration, she's developed a foolproof list of requirements for finding "the one". Bar owner Sebastian "Bash" Palmer finds Chelsea beautiful, smart, and fun, but he thinks her list is ridiculous. Intent on proving that Chelsea is looking for love in all the wrong ways, he offers to help her find the "perfect" man. Chelsea knows that Bash isn't the right guy for her - he barely meets one of her criteria - but there's something about him that has her yearning.

Up-and-coming chef Maddie Collins finds out that her father's life was a lie when she is bequeathed a family homeplace she never knew existed—by the husband of the only woman her father ever loved. A former SEAL, rugged cowboy Boone Gallagher arrives back in Texas to discover that the father who drove him away has struck one last blow. The only place he's ever thought of as home now belongs to a woman who doesn't want it, and he must keep her there for thirty days—or it will be lost to them both.

Mitch Gallagher is a loner, down to the bone. Banished at sixteen from everything and everyone he held dear, he's an intensely private man whose rusty, unused heart long ago gave up on love. Fragile Perrie Matheson is on the run to protect her beloved son. Too ill to travel further with a winter storm on the way, she has no choice but to gamble her child's safety on a man who wants only to be left alone. But during days spent together in the mountain cabin, Mitch and Perrie each find surprises in store.

Steph Hargrove was a bombshell, an intrepid woman operating in the business world with guts, brains and daring. She was accustomed to going after whatever she wanted until a man she called friend betrayed her and the company she’d helped build. Since that time, she’s been a shadow of the wild, wicked woman who’d carved a swath through her world. Gavin O’Neill is an artisan with wood, a gardener, a restorer of battered homes and a savior of strays. When first he meets the wounded woman who postures as invincible and worldly, the sadness in her eyes draws him even more than her lush figure does.

It’s the first Christmas in Sweetgrass Springs, Texas for several newcomers who have found a real home for the first time—or found home again. As Jackson Gallagher works to save his hometown from withering away by relocating his business empire there, the only gift he really wants is to marry the teenage sweetheart he thought he’d lost forever—but Veronica Patton Butler has other hearts to care for, however much she loves Jackson. Bridger Calhoun is more than ready to make Penelope Gallagher his bride, but however much she adores him, Shark Girl is dragging her heels on tying the knot.

Take two reluctant brides and two frustrated cowboys, mix with both clans of Gallaghers and season with a Navy SEAL or three, a movie star, a Hollywood Barbie and a country music giant—and you get a recipe for family mayhem, laughter and a tear or two. Watch as Sweetgrass Springs matriarch Ruby Gallagher and her granddaughter Scarlett, aided and abetted by the irrepressible Maddie Rose Gallagher, try to pull off surprise wedding plans for each other in the worst­ kept secret in Texas’ most beloved small town.

Stilettos and pencil skirts are more successful Pen Gallagher’s style than the jeans and boots of the ranch where she was raised. She’s fought hard for her success and spared no time for love, certain that marriage and family are not her lot. Now everything she’s worked for is jeopardized as scandal brews around her. Forced to flee D.C. before her identity is revealed and she can never regain the life she battled to build, she reluctantly returns to Sweetgrass Springs, Texas. Sexy Navy SEAL turned firefighter Bridger Calhoun, on the other hand, visits Sweetgrass every chance he gets.

Empire builder Dominic Santorini is surrounded by women angling to share the luxurious life his wealth will buy. Eccentric, colorful tomboy Lexie Grayson encounters a hot guy in a hotter classic car broken down on the side of the road, and an afternoon as his mechanic leads to a scorching night with a man she knows only as Nikos—but when dawn arrives, he’s vanished, never to be seen again. She buries her heartache in her new job, staging a launch for a video game that will give her a chance to snoop around for clues that the company is responsible for stealing from her best friend.

All the girl known as Brenda Jones has ever wanted is a home and family, but she's on the run from her past. She works hard and stays to herself, save only for her budding friendship with the equally shy Henry Jansen. Henry wants more than a simple friendship, but he’s convinced she’s too young, too innocent, too sweet. Brenda has a crush on Henry, as well, but she’s underage and terrified of being put back in foster care, where she’s spent most of her life since her mother abandoned her at age eight.

Outlander meets post-Civil War unrest in the conclusion to Melissa Lenhardt's fast-paced historical series. "A fast-paced page-turner, kill or be killed historical romance with bandits, Pinkerton agents, bounty hunters, mystery and more. Melissa Lenhardt writes with passion and does not hold...